Key:

Concepts and Transformation

ISSN 1384-6639
E-ISSN 1569-9692

<p>This problem-driven journal focused on the role of social research in workplace reform and organizational renewal. It presented new perspectives on the relationship between theory and practice in social science. </p><p><em><strong>Volume 9 (2004) last volume published.</strong></em></p>

This article offers a summary reflection on the recent (September 2003) WTO Summit held at Cancún, Mexico. It places the WTO issues in the context of the process of globalisation. The discussion has four main sections: The first surveys the Cancún meeting, its participants, orientations and main topics. The second covers the characteristics of the altermundista international movement, its composition, its denunciations, proposals and demands, and the failure of the Summit. The third section raises the possible consequences for Latin America, the problems and the forces at work. The final section gives a personal view of the outcomes of this event and expresses that it opened up some opportunities for hope.

This is a personal Latin American perspective on action research, as my contribution to the debate promoted by Werner Fricke on the subject. My discussion follows the main issues outlined by Davydd Greenwood in his article (CAT 7(2): 2002), which laid the ground for our exchanges. I argue that it is too early to dismiss all contributions from conventional research to the social sciences, and that action research’s main contribution is to really involve ordinary people in building knowledge, an endeavor that is not easy to achieve. In relation to unfulfilled promises and unmet challenges I discuss such issues by referring to my own practice.

Contemporary action research is facing three major challenges: The need to deal with a future that can no longer be understood in terms of the past, the need to create processes that can involve large numbers of other actors and the need to link the practical results of action research to the democratic institutions of society. In research terms, these challenges cannot be met through conventional, historically oriented studies only. There is a need to develop new orientations and to shape the research processes accordingly

We offer an epistemological basis for action research, in order to increase the validity, the practical significance, and the transformational potential of social science. We start by outlining some of the paradigmatic issues which underlie action research, arguing for a “turn to action” which will complement the linguistic turn in the social sciences. Four key dimensions of an action science are discussed: the primacy of the practical, the centrality of participation, the requirement for experiential grounding, and the importance of normative, analogical theory. Three broad strategies for action research are suggested: first-person research/practice addresses the ability of a person to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life; second-person research/practice engages a face-to-face group in collaborative inquiry; third-person research/practice asks how we can establish inquiring communities which reach beyond the immediate group to engage with whole organizations, communities and countries. The article argues that a transformational science needs to integrate first- second- and third-person voices in ways that increase the validity of the knowledge we use in our moment-to-moment living, that increase the effectiveness of our actions in real-time, and that remain open to unexpected transformation when our taken-for-granted assumptions, strategies, and habits are appropriately challenged. Illustrative references to studies that begin to speak to these questions are offered.

This paper presents the argument that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation in society’s disposition of labor capacity, seen in changes in the labor strategy of large employers. This may be leading to a new type of labor power that could be called ‘self-entrepreneurial’. In the paper’s first part the concept of the ‘entreployee’ (Arbeitskraftunternehmer) is presented briefly, after which, the second part examines several important theoretical objections to the concept, raised in the course of current German debate.

This article examines how and why the academically-based social sciences, both pure and applied, have lost their relevance to practical human affairs (praxis) and links this discussion to the reasons why action research is a marginal activity in the academic and policy worlds. It also contains a harsh critique of action research practice focused on action researchers’ combined sense of moral superiority over conventional researchers and general complacency about fundamental issues of theory, method, and validity. The central argument is that “doing good” is not the same as “doing good social research” and that we action researchers need to hold ourselves accountable to higher standards, not only to compete with conventional social research but for the benefit of the non-academic stakeholders in action research projects.

In this article we describe a set of methods — which we call a 'social poetics ' —for use by a group of practitioners in coming to a more articulate grasp of their own practices, thus to develop them. Crucially influenced by Wittgenstein 's (1953) claims — that "Nothing is hidden" from us in our conduct of our practices, and that "the origin and primitive form of the language-game is a reaction " — we show how the methods of philosophical investigation he outlines can also be used to great effect in our everyday affairs. They work, not in terms of concepts or theories worked out ahead of time in committee rooms or research laboratories by experts, but in terms of certain practical uses of language, at crucial points within the ongoing conduct of a practice, by those involved in it. Crucially, they lead us to focus on novelties, on new but unnoticed possibilities for 'going on' available to us in our present circumstances, but present to us usually in only fleeting moments. If we can allow ourselves to be 'struck by' these novelties, then we can often go on, not to solve what had been seen as a problem, but to develop new ways forward, in which the old problems become irrelevant.

In his article in Volume 7, No.2 of Concepts and Transformation, Greenwood lays the ground for a self-critical review of action research. This is very much called for but there is a need to avoid this review becoming a revival of yesterday’s “famous cases”. Major parts of today’s action research are oriented towards social movements, learning regions and other levels of organisation far beyond the small group.The associated research challenges can be met only by developing new research platforms and seeking new alliances with other branches of research.